ANOTHER PLAN FROM OUTER SPACE

Stars: Jessica Morris, Augie Duke, Scott Sell, Hans Hernke, Minchi Murakami and Elizabeth Saint.
Writer/director: Lance Polland

Available from April 10 on Amazon Prime and Vimeo on Demand from Bounty Films.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

Another Plan from Outer Space is an endearingly schizophrenic oddity, the latest typically atypical subversive genre lark from the increasingly ambitious shock-auteur, Lance Polland. Back in the hard desert setting that he favoured for his previous features Crack Whore (2012) and Werewolves in Heat (2015), Polland this time employs, dare we suggest, nuance and subtlety in a talky but well-told ode to old-school sci-fi B-pics.

Rich in influences that run the gamut from Rod Serling’s classic TV series Twilight Zone to Kurt Neumann’s Rocketship X-M (1950) to Stewart Raffill’s The Philadelphia Experiment (1984), Polland envisions a (very) near-future setting where Mars has been colonised and shuttles regularly ferry the common space traveller back and forth. The Genesis One is returning to Earth when solar flares send the ship hurtling into the desert soil. In true B-movie fashion, the Genesis One explodes in a massive fireball, only to have all but one of the six crew members thrown clear, largely unharmed and fully clothed.

Assuming command, Captain Jackson (Scott Sell, pitching for ‘Charlton Heston’ but landing on ‘Bruce Dern’, which is fine) rallies the survivors – the increasingly erratic Commander Strickland (Jessica Morris, terrific); medico, Dr Yushiro (Minchi Murakami, a regular in Polland’s troupe); chief engineer Hudson (Augie Duke); and, 2IC Lieutenant Brooks (Hans Hernke, the pic’s producer). The team know they have crashed back on Earth, but are bewildered by anomalies that begin to present themselves, such as radioactive shacks, distant music, unexplainable visitations.

Polland signals from the first frames that he has higher artistic goals than any time previously. The opening credit sequence is pure dazzle, melding visions of space travel and life on Mars with archival footage of U.S. Commanders in Chief (Kennedy, Obama, Trump) re-affirming the sense of exploration that demands Americans seek the great unknown that The Universe offers.

For much of the first two acts, he also allows his actors room to breathe life into what, on paper, may have amounted to fairly stock caricatures. The downside to this freedom is that scenes sometimes drag; editor Polland does writer/director Polland a slight disservice, with some of the film’s 98 minutes ripe for a pruning.

The other irreconcilable aspect of Another Plan from Outer Space is that title, which unavoidably conjures images of a certain Ed Wood film better known for its giddy awfulness. Lensed with consummate skill in affecting monochrome by Vita Trabucco and enlivened by Alessio Fidelbo’s appropriately theremin-flavoured score, Polland pays homage to the same films that inspired Mr. Wood, but offers a much more narratively assured and professionally packaged work of the imagination than anything from any ‘Worst Movie Ever’ list.

Polland has ambitions that Another Plan from Outer Space will spawn a sequel (stay through the credits). The film plays its Shyamalan-like ‘twist card’ particularly well, though the open-ended denouement may irk some. As the film morphs from ‘desert planet survival’ story into something else entirely, however, there is a sense that a further 90 minutes with these characters under this director’s guidance would be a very welcome development.